St. Vincent de Paul Place, Norwich’s only full-time soup kitchen and food pantry, has been at the center of controversy since July, when it moved into the former St. Joseph School on Cliff Street.

On Dec. 18, the Commission on the City Plan ruled that it did not fit into the neighborhood, and rejected a special use permit which would have allowed the charity to remain permanently on Cliff Street.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich, which runs St. Vincent de Paul, has filed an appeal in federal court to keep it open at its current location. In those filings, the diocese says there are a multitude of services within the city that provide meals and food for the needy, from local churches to downtown support agencies, and that the soup kitchen is being unfairly targeted.

The diocese filed its appeal in Connecticut District Court’s Bridgeport office. Last week, presiding Judge Warren W. Eginton ruled that St. Vincent can remain at its Cliff Street premises at least through Feb. 26, when an injunction hearing is scheduled that could keep the ministry there even longer.

Tim Bates, a New London attorney representing the diocese in its appeal, singled out 12 similar programs to bolster its claim the city treated it unfairly.

“Our argument will be in part discrimination, but also as importantly, that the city did the right thing in many of those instances by recognizing that providing food to the poor and needy is a legitimate religious use that does not require additional use permitting for an established religious entity,” Bates said.

But officials from the some of the programs mentioned by the diocese say there are differences between the work they do and that of St. Vincent.

The diocese describes a food pantry that runs “depending on need and supply” Monday through Friday at Madonna Place, located on Main Street in Norwich.

“It’s a little bit taken out of context,” Madonna Place executive director Nancy Gentes said. “I think there’s probably some misunderstanding on what we’re doing.”

Gentes said Madonna Place has an on-site kitchen that is stocked with food available for preparation by clients. But people aren’t allowed to leave with items, and it’s not open for public distribution, as St. Vincent de Paul’s pantry is.

“I would not consider us a food pantry or soup kitchen facility. It’s more like we’re letting people get food while they’re here,” Gentes said. “If a family has a true need and we happen to have excess food, we have allowed them to leave with some.”

By comparison, the diocese says St. Vincent de Paul averages 7,104 visits to its pantry every year, and serves 79,632 meals. It also delivers meals to a city-run “no freeze shelter” that’s open from Nov. 1 through March 31, runs Norwich’s only public shower and laundry facility, and provides a weekly medical mobile unit for clients.

Page 2 of 3 - “As for what the soup kitchen does, nobody can match that,” Norwich resident Ed Poirier, a frequent visitor to the facility, said. “They help a lot of people.”

Poirier understands why some people in the Cliff Street area have concerns over the amount of foot traffic that’s come to the neighborhood since the soup kitchen arrived there last summer.

“With the clientele that hang out there, it’s not all about needing,” Poirier said as he picked up a bag of food from the Salvation Army Food Pantry on Main Street. “But as for what the soup kitchen does, nobody can match that.”

The Salvation Army facility is open three days a week and is among the 12 charities mentioned in the diocese’s federal appeal.

The appeal also pointed to a 2005 decision by the Commission on the City Plan to grant First Haitian Baptist Church on Central Avenue a special use permit for a weekly food pantry it launched.

“Defendants have required no additional approvals from First Haitian Baptist Church to operate its food pantry,” the diocese’s appeal states. First Haitian Baptist Church representatives could not be reached for comment.

Bates said the information included in its appeal on the other programs in the city was culled from public city records by Linnea McCaffrey, a land use analyst at Bates’s Robinson & Cole law firm.

The Rev. John Lancz, of United Congregational Church on Broadway, said his church partners with several other area churches to prepare a community lunch that feeds about 120 people. It is offered on the fifth Sunday of months that have five Sundays. In 2013, the lunch will be offered just three times. It also is among the programs mentioned by the diocese.

“We don’t do it every day. We’re not in a residential area and it’s Sunday afternoon that we do it,” Lancz said.

Linda Craney, secretary at the Lee Memorial United Methodist Church on Washington Street, said volunteers get up to 100 people for their community lunches, which are served on the fourth Sunday of every month.

The diocese’s complaint asserts that “many of the patrons of these religious institutions are also patrons of St. Vincent.”

Craney refuted that in the instance of her church’s community meal service, saying it does not attract the same clientele.

“We get different people,” she said, noting that Lee Memorial is in a different section of the city from Cliff Street.

“I think the number is lower because of where we are,” she said.

She noted, however, that volunteers from Lee Memorial prepare dinners every Tuesday night at St. Vincent de Paul Place for clients.

Lee Memorial is located in an R-40 residential district, where a special use permit is required for “philanthropic, educational, recreational, religious and eleemosynary use,” according to section 8.1.2 of the city’s zoning ordinances.

Page 3 of 3 - That’s the same section of code diocesan officials cited to the Commission on the City Plan in its request for a special use permit pertaining to St. Vincent.

Lancz said the number of programs available to feed the region’s hungry is an indication of how widespread the problem is, and hopes to see St. Vincent remain open somewhere within the city’s boundaries.

“I think it’s a complex situation that has gotten to an unfortunate place,” Lancz said. “It seems like we should have been able to sit down and talk about it as neighbors, rather than legal adversaries.”